hey you, gender nectar sifting
through the grain of gold
tripping at your door
is that you
alpha in her blood
and when the woman lies
you don't believe her
rolling and unrolling
coiling, emerging
running free
running through
the underworld
into your room
is he real or a ghost-lie
she feels she isn't heard
and the veil tears and rages
till her voices are remembered
and his secrets can be told
hey you, gender nectar
crystalline from the vine
you know you'll drink her
rolling and unrolling
coiling, emerging
running free
running through
the afterworld
into your room
so she prays for a prankster
and lust in the marriage bed
and he waits till she can give
and he waits and he waits
Tori Quotes
Where were you going musically on the album? Were you trying for a specific sound, or just trying to let it flow?
I don't sit down and try for something. It just sort of happens. I just like working with different sounds right now, instead of everything being so stripped. I'm into producing now. I produced the last three albums. "Lust" has a really strange effect on the piano and in the voice, so it feels like she's in a shape she can't get out of, but it's a shape that's able to bleed in to itself. Creating sounds like that -- it's pretty intangible to try and talk about it. [CNN Online - September 29, 1999]
I really got that what lust meant to me in my 20s was very different. I've loved people and not lusted [after] them. But I found that I hadn't experienced lust until I had some kind of trust for someone. [Los Angeles Times - September 23, 1999]
I had to bring performance to the sacred for myself. That doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of sensuality and sexuality involved, or that you don't get passionate. There is a primal thing that goes on when it's hot, as they say. There's this magnetic quality. It's like you're having an emotional affair with thousands of people, if you look at it like that. It's funny -- we do these little meet and greets sometimes before a show, and I'll hear people say, "She's a really lovely lady" backstage before I go on, after they've just met me. But they're quite surpised that lovely ladies can go do what I do onstage. If we can just for five seconds get past Bodily Functions 101, get past that first step of masturbation and into a higher level of eroticism, maybe I can explain it. I think we have to walk into another culture for a minute. Let's talk about the Kundalini being activated. At the base of the spine, the idea of the snake is coiled. And that's what a song like "Lust," which I wrote after marrying Mark, was really tapping into. The idea of rolling and unrolling, coiling and merging -- energy moving through the underworld to the real world. Under flesh into the heart, then taking it back to the real world.
Similarly the song "Sweet the Sting," on The Beekeeper, makes my hips sway. This to me is a musical example of the marriage of the sacred and the profane. [Tori Amos: Piece by Piece]
Live Versions
"Lust"
November 30, 1999 - Providence, Rhode Island
"Lust"
November 13, 2002 - New York, New York
"Lust"
April 27, 2003 - Houston, Texas
"Lust"
October 4, 2009 - Antwerp, Belgium
"Lust"
December 3, 2011 - New York, New York
"Lust"
June 20, 2014 - Sofia, Bulgaria
"Lust"
October 27, 2017 - Chicago, Illinois
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